


Kind

by RubyofRaven



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Abusive Parents, Adoption, Alternate Universe, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bruce Wayne Adopts Child(ren), Bruce Wayne is Batman, Dark Bruce Wayne, Death, Foster Care, Gen, Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Minor Character Death, Murder, Origin Story, Protective Bruce Wayne, Young Dick Grayson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-12 14:54:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28887171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RubyofRaven/pseuds/RubyofRaven
Summary: Bruce wanted vengeance for his parents murder. He wanted Joe Chill to pay for what he had done. Bruce never put much thought into what kind of man that made him, right up until he was staring over the man’s body into the wide eyes of a skinny child.Bruce is this boy (he is not this boy).
Relationships: Dick Grayson & Bruce Wayne
Comments: 6
Kudos: 51





	Kind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aSnuggleSheep](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aSnuggleSheep/gifts).



> Hello! 
> 
> My bodacious and benevolent friend Ruby of Raven has kindly edited and posted this fic on her account for me. She’s been incredibly helpful and supportive, so shout out to her! 
> 
> This fic is the result of a request from my awesome, inspiring friend aSnuggleSheep, she asked: Would you write a fic of batman killing a villian that he didn’t know had a kid, so he just adopts them. (Maybe Dick?)
> 
> So I gave it my best shot. This is essentially an alternate take on Bruce becoming Batman/his first time out as Batman and how he ends up adopting Dick. To the best of my knowledge this fic doesn’t exactly fit with any specific comic verse, but it does have Joe Chill as the named murderer of Martha and Thomas Wayne.
> 
> Disclaimer, I do not own _Batman_ or any of its characters, plot events, etc.
> 
> Thanks for reading.
> 
> -MMR

If Bruce were a little kinder, maybe he wouldn’t have killed him.

Maybe he would have let him go, or turned him over to the police, or just broken his fucking nose. But ever since _that_ night, Bruce’s only reason to live, to grow, has been to make it to _this_ night. The night he can finally enact vengeance for his parents’ murder.

Bruce remembers his last moments with them only in fragments. Popcorn and the glow of neon lights. The cool of nighttime, the warm of his mother’s hand. The scent of his father’s cologne. The glint of his mother’s pearl necklace. A disheveled stranger making demands. A twitchy trigger finger.

Then, a boy half in the shadows of an alley, knelt by a growing pool of blood. The screech as a bat passed overhead, backlit by Gotham’s hazy skyline.

Bruce is no longer that boy (he is always that boy).

But he grew, he took hold of all of his fear and anger and grief and turned it into Batman. He turned himself into the kind of man that can get revenge, whose first and only purpose is to find Joe Chill. To end the man that killed his parents in cold blood.

Everything since _that_ night had led up to _this_ night. His first night out in Gotham as the Bat.

Batman turns aways from the cooling body of his first enemy. _It’s over_ , he thinks, and there’s a flare of vicious, overwhelming satisfaction in that.

It’s then that he sees the smudge.

He had tracked Chill down to this alley, crammed in the eastern end of the Narrows. There is blood caked in the cracked pavement, some of it much too old to be Chill’s, and the walls are lined with litter and other refuse. 

The alley had appeared empty, but now Bruce can see a twitch of movement from behind an overflowing trash bin. He can almost make out a shape in shadows, some sense telling him that the darkness is not empty.

“Who’s there?” Batman growls.

There is a scuff, like a sneaker dragging across asphalt, and then a child creeps forward from behind the bin. He stays crouched close to the ground, muscles tense like he’s ready to run. He’s skinny and rather grimy - and it’s too dark to tell if the dark blotch on his cheekbone is dirt or a bruise.

“You should get yourself home, kid,” Bruce grunts, shifting a bit uncomfortably. Violence isn’t exactly unknown to the kids in this part of the city, but he’d have preferred not to have any children witness the scene in this alley.

The boy stares at him, blue eyes wide. 

“Don’t got one. Me and Dad’ve been living outta the car,” the kid says.

That’s not that surprising for the Narrows, but if the kid has a parent and some form of shelter Bruce isn’t particularly inclined to drag the boy to the nearest police station.

“Then you better get back there,” Bruce says. “It’s not safe to be out alone this time of night.”

The boy nods, head finaling turning away from Batman. His eyes land on the body in the middle of the small alleyway. He cautiously eases a couple feet forward watching Batman out of the corner of his eye, before shifting to his knees and reaching easily into the dead man’s jacket pocket. Bruce doesn’t exactly approve of petty theft, but he’s hardly inclined to guard the meager possessions of his parents’ murderer. 

Bruce expects the child to pull out a wallet or maybe a watch before scampering away, but all he takes from the coat is a beat up set of car keys. Bruce can vaguely make out the logo, Ford, and he notes that the fob looks at least ten years out of date. 

The boy turns them over in his hand, grip easy and sure - like he’s held this specific set of keys a hundred times before. Instead of disgust or fear, the kid regards the corpse with a strange air of detachment and an existential resignation - like something in his world ended when this man ended.

And suddenly Bruce realizes who this child is. Who the corpse is to this child.

Bruce sees a boy half in the shadows of an alley, knelt by a growing pool of blood. The screech as a bat passes overhead, backlit by Gotham’s hazy skyline.

Bruce is this boy (he is not this boy).

Bruce is finally hit by the repercussions of what he has done.

 _It’s not over,_ Bruce thinks. For the boy it’s just started, and this child doesn’t even have Alfred to come lead him home. He doesn’t even have a home.

“Wait,” Bruce says, voice softening, before the boy can leave the alley and disappear into the twisting maze of streets. He has to be sure. “Do you have parents?” 

The boy looks at the corpse for a long moment, before shaking his head.

“Any family?” 

The boy shakes his head again.

“Alright,” Bruce says, unsure of what to do. He can hardly take the boy to the police, not when he still has Chill’s blood on his uniform. 

The boy has almost disappeared around the corner when Bruce calls out one last question.

“What’s your name?”

The kid pauses. “Dick,” he mumbles, before disappearing. 

For a moment, Bruce thinks he’s just been insulted by a nine year old, but the child’s voice was serious when he said it - unironic. And to be honest, a kid in this part of town generally knows better curses than that, and the murder of a parent would generally call for better curses. 

The deductive part of Bruce’s brain starts whirring. Presumably the kid’s name is short for Richard, and his last name is probably Chill based on common western naming traditions - though, considering Joe Chill wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, Bruce supposes the child could be named for his mother. If the last name remains unknown, a first name isn’t much to go off of, but Bruce has a feeling that particular nickname for Richard isn’t very popular these days.

Before he leaves the alley, Batman leaves an anonymous tip with the police about a child living alone in a car. Old model, Ford, probably within a few blocks of the eastern end of the Narrows.

Bruce finds that his first night as Batman has been much less satisfying then he thought it would be. 

He barely spares a glance at Chill’s cooling body. In his mind’s eye, all he can see is the boy at the edge of a growing pool of blood, all alone.

Then Batman goes home. There is something Bruce Wayne needs to do.

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------

For the next week, Bruce Wayne visits various fosters homes around Gotham. He makes donations and releases a statement to the press about charity, and giving back to the city, and how the children are the future. All the while he searches for the child from the alleyway.

He finally finds him five days into his search. The foster home is sparse, over crowded, and the foster mother is overworked, but she’s not cruel and the place is clean. When Bruce arrives for a scheduled tour and a small lunch, the foster mother has already gathered all seven of the children in the living room. 

At her prompting they introduce themselves one by one. Bruce tries to smile and nod and generally look engaged. 

When it seems like the last introduction has been made, Bruce turns his attention back to the foster mother, trying not to be disappointed that he’s failed yet another time to locate the boy from the alley. The foster mother, though, clears her throat and pointedly looks to the back corner of the room where a skinny boy had gone unnoticed. 

He steps shyly forward. “I’m Dick,” he says. 

The foster mother sighs in exasperation. “That’s Richard,” she says.

The boy scowls at the use of his full name, little eyebrows furrowed, and sits back down in his little corner of the room. Something in Bruce’s hardened heart melts a little.

The rest of the visit goes well enough. They eat the meager lunch of soup and sandwiches, the foster mother gives a tour of the house before suggesting they all head outside for recreational time. Like most city houses, the yard is small. But there is a small swing set, an assortment of scuffed balls, jump ropes, and a rather lopsided basketball hoop.

Bruce quickly gets roped into a game of basketball by the older children and easily passes a half hour that way. Eventually, Bruce makes his excuses and leaves the older kids to their game. He takes a moment to undo his tie and leave it draped over the porch rail with the blazer he took off before joining the basketball game. In hindsight, it was not his best plan to wear a suite when planning to spend the day with kids.

The foster mother is leaning in the doorway, supervising the kids as they play. Bruce stands beside her and looks out over the yard. He notices Dick over in the scraggly bit of lawn that has actually managed to produce grass. 

“So, what’s his story?” Bruce asks, nodding his head toward the boy.

“Richard Grayson. Mother died about a year ago, estranged father got custody. The father was apparently involved in petty theft and got on the wrong side of somebody - they found him dead in an alley last week. Poor child was living out of his father’s car,” the foster mother says.

“And how’s he been adjusting with the - death?” Bruce asks, his voice nearly catching as he tries not to consider too deeply his own implication in that word.

“We had a counselor talk to him on Tuesday. He misses his mother, but that’s pretty well in the past. He hasn’t said much about his father. When Richard arrived, he had a few bruises on his face and arms. I think the loss of his father upset his living situation more than any emotional bond.” She shrugs, adding, “It’s not that unusual a story.”

There is a brief commotion as two of the children get in an argument over a jump rope, and the foster mother goes over to sort it out.

Dick is tumbling around all by himself, doing somersaults, cartwheels, and a few ill-fated attempts at a handstand. Every time he falls, he smiles brightly, laughing to himself. 

Even with less than Bruce had, even after losing his father in a way so similar to the way Bruce lost his, this child has a peace and lightness that Bruce never did. Bruce abruptly finds that he wants to protect that peace. He wants to be a part of that light.

He goes over to the boy. “Hi,” he says. “I’m Bruce.”

“Hi,” the boy says. There is a wariness in his gaze that speaks of a harsh childhood, but behind that there is an innate brightness trying to break through.

“Are you learning to do handstands?” Bruce asks.

“Yeah. I keep falling over, though.” 

On some instinct he didn’t even realize he had, Bruce crouches down so his considerable height is closer to the boy’s eye level. He leans in and says in a faux whisper, “I like handstands, too. Wanna see?”

The boy nods. Bruce stands up and makes sure the child is a safe distance away before flawlessly kicking up into a handstand. He easily holds it for a minute and then gracefully lowers himself back to his feet.

Dick claps his hands and giggles. “Cool! Teach me!” he says, then adds, “Please?”

Bruce smiles, small and genuine, and explains how to kick up. He catches Dick’s ankles, steadying him, and Dick manages to hold the handstand for a few seconds. Bruce gives the boy a brief warning before letting go. Gently, Dick tumbles to the ground, quickly sitting up to grin widely at Bruce.

“I did it! Did ya see?” he asks.

“Yes,” Bruce says, looking at the boy’s glowing smile. “I see.”

Dick is already back on his feet, nearly bouncing with energy. “ C’mon,” he says. “There’s a trapeze bar on the swing set. I can do an awesome flip! I bet I can do _four_ of them!”

The boy grabs Bruce’s hand and starts to pull him across the yard. Bruce startles at the sudden contact, but he quickly relaxes, gently cradling the tiny hand in his larger, rougher, one.

Sometimes, since that night in the alley, when Bruce looks at his own hands, all he can see is blood - but the boy’s hands are pristine. The only mark on them is the mild calluses developing from playing on the trapeze bar. Bruce will do all he can to keep them that way.

For the first time since _that_ night, Bruce thinks about what kind of man he wants to be. What kind of man Gotham needs him to be.

He wonders how fast his team of lawyers can draw up adoption papers. He’ll call them right away - right after Dick is done showing him how he can do a flip.


End file.
